[Day 114] If at first you succeed...

... lower your expectations.

In my previous blog (http://lifeaftereshen.blogspot.com/2016/08/day-65-time-keeps-on-slipping-conclusion.html) I wrote about making a daily plan and working through the plan during the day.  Well during the last couple of months, the daily plan kinda turned into a weekly plan and then really no plan.   It's not as if I'm getting up later and later each day or I am binge watching Paper Route Wars or Real Beehives of Toledo.  It's just that I don't seem to accomplish all that much.

Once a month, I meet with Intel folks who "retired" at the same time as I did for coffee to get caught up on things.  One of the guys says that it is reasonable just to accomplish one thing in the morning and one thing in the afternoon.  So that's encouraging.  But I wonder what is taking up the rest of my time?

One possibility is knowing things can now be pushed out.  When I was working, I only had evenings and weekends to get things done.   I had a limited amount of time to accomplish things on my to-do list, so I did them when I had the chance.  I'd rush through what needed to be done.  Now that everyday has become a weekend, there isn't that pressure.  There's always tomorrow. 

However when I looked back at what I did during my past couple of weeks to see what I did, I realized that there wasn't a lot of down time but rather more focused time.  I did do things but was spending more time on them.   Just last week I worked on a programming assignment for class.  It was an Android application in Java to manage grocery lists.  I would get up in the morning, meet with my team - we had daily Scrum type meetings on Google hangout - and proceed to code.  I found myself diving into the program, looking up examples online (I'm now pretty familiar with SQLite) , and writing test cases for my code.  I would look up and realize that it was almost noon and I was still in my bathrobe.  I even stayed up late to work on my code, knowing that I had the flexibility of napping the next day.

The same with cooking.  In the past, cooking was stressful.  I would rush home and throw stuff together for dinner.  Now I can start earlier (no jokes about being older and eating dinner at 4), look up interesting recipes online, watch videos on how to cook certain foods and take time browsing the grocery store for ingredients.

As a result of taking more time on the things I do, I find myself enjoying what I do more and do it better -  I cleaned up all the LINT (code style) errors in my program and even learned how to chop up an onion without tearing up (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1FfZiiK-I4)

This reminds me of using Flow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)) at work - instead of jumping between things, one would focus on working on something specific for a period of time.    I used to tell my team that it was okay to block out chunks of time in their schedule to get a particular task done.  I think by doing so would allow the task to be finished with better quality and the person to feel better about having done the task.
  
So the takeaway is to plan to only accomplish two things a day.  This blog is one of them.  Now to see how those bees are doing....

Day 65 - Time Keeps on Slipping (conclusion)

Time does indeed slip.  While it's been almost a month since my last update, I did start a work related blog about my use of analogies at work.  You can find it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/management-analogies-mba-bear-story-eric-shen

Getting back to my non-work related blog...

[voiceover by Morgan Freeman] 
Previously in the Life After Eshen blog, Eric mentioned how the tyranny of the urgent no longer rules his daily life.  Yet there's the underlying concern of having the days melt together like the emperor penguin's habitat in Antarctica.  Eric needed to come up with a way to decide what to do on a daily basis.
[/voiceover]

Having more time and with the Fall semester starting,  I decided to dive into the online masters program and take three classes - Software Design Practices, Database Systems Concepts and Design and Machine Language for Trading.  I also wanted to hone my programming skills at the same time since the classes all assume the students already have at least a modicum of programming experience.  Additionally there are things around the house that needed to be done but tended to fall into the category 'out of sight, out of mind'.    

During the first week of class, I started getting anxious about what I needed to do for the various classes as well as other things that I needed to do.  The list of tasks would run around my mind and make it feel like there was much more to do than what was really there.  Taking advice from what I told my direct reports when they got overwhelmed with too much work,  I came up with a method to plan my daily activities.

I bought a small whiteboard from the dollar store and listed out six items that I wanted to make progress on each day.  In the morning, while still motivated with a fresh cup of coffee still running through my veins, I write down what I hope to accomplish in each area that day.   As I make progress during the day, I reward myself by erasing the item I just completed.  Usually I get all but one or two items completed in a day.  That's fine since if I'm always finishing everything, I'm probably underestimating what I can do each day (aka sandbagging).  Also, I try to avoid the temptation of doing something that's not on the board, writing it on the board and erasing it immediately thereafter.

There are probably additional items I should also track such as 'Physical Fitness' or 'Personal Development'.  However since I don't have enough room, if I were to add more categories, to paraphrase a movie quote "We're gonna need a bigger white board"

Let me know your thoughts on daily to-do lists

Eric

Movie references used in this blog: March of the Penguins, Jaws

Day 35 - Time keeps on slippin' (part one)

[Editor's Note - Apologies in advance for a delayed update.  I'm sure a lot of people were waiting with baited breath to gleam pearls of wisdom this blog.  To thee, I beseech your forgiveness.   Now on with the blog.]

"Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future" - Steve Miller Band

“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”- William Blake


What I've noticed lately is that time is no longer my task masker.  I am no longer bound to the tyranny of the urgent in getting things done as soon as possible.  At Intel, I had to attend meetings on a daily basis, provide weekly deliverables and make progress on longer-term tasks.   Now there isn't such urgency.  Deadlines are few and far between (e.g. feed dog within two hour window in morning and evening,  take garbage cans out Wednesday night, pay bills once a month).   As a result, it's easy to fall into the trap of having one day roll into another and losing track of what day of the week it is.   What I struggle with is balancing relaxing and out enjoying the moment versus getting things done.   To address that, I have developed daily guidelines...

* When I wake up in the morning - get up!   It's so easy to wake up, see it's a bit earlier than you want it to be and roll over and sleep for at least another couple of hours.  I try to wake up around 6am but if I wake up a bit before, I just get up.   I find it better to get up earlier than waking up later feeling groggy and annoyed for sleeping away the morning.   And the reason the morning is so important...

* Do mental activities in the morning.  I find myself the most alert in the morning.  So with a cup of coffee I do something that uses my brain.  I could be studying for my computer science class, reading a book/newspaper or writing the occasional blog.  [Editor's note - I am considering starting a more management focused blog on LinkedIn.  I'll be talking about LinkedIn more in a future blog entry]

* After lunch, my brain gets a bit foggy so I work on things that don't require as much grey matter.  I  do things around the house and other routine activities.  Once my alertness has picked up again, I resume cognitive tasks.

* After dinner, relax.  Yeah, it's tempting to say that I'm not working - I'm relaxed all day.  That may be true to a certain extent but I want to spend my evenings on activities that will end by 10pm so I can go to bed at a reasonable hour.  If I start on a problem set for class or pull up a computer game, I can easily lose myself in the activity and wind up going to bed at a very late hour.  Given that "there's always tomorrow" in my life, I don't have to cram everything into one day.  So I usually watch a show or movie - No binge watching for me - before heading to bed.

So how do I pick what to do on a daily basis?  Well, that would be the subject for my next entry which I hope I will write sooner than later.  And of course I'll write in the morning.

Let me know your thoughts.

Eric

Day 5 - First week done

Well it's the end of my first "retired" week.  Let's see how I did against my short-term goals..

• Set weekly goals aligned with long-term goals. - Partially done.  I finished my project in my Information Security class but that's about it.  An unplanned item popped up where I spent most of Thursday changing out the door lock cylinders in the Camry.
• Blog - Done :-)
• Know what day of the week it is - Done but it was close.  I was a bit unsure about Wednesday.  Luckily I still get the newspaper and was able to glean the day of the week from the front page.
• Shower - Done.  :-)
• Change clothes - Done. :-)
• Eat three meals - Done. :-)  Bonus - I ate the three meals at normal times (e.g. did not eat lunch at 3pm)
• Interact with a non-family member to maintain connections with the outside world - Done.  Thursday was a close one.  I originally planned to go to happy hour with an ex-coworker (that narrowed it just around 200 potential folks) but he couldn't make it.  Around 8pm when I was heading out to get the mail, my neighbor was outside.  We usually just shouted greetings and went our own ways.  But since I didn't meet my goal for the day, I stopped and chatted and had a very pleasant conversation.  Mental note - Create a list of folks that I can talk to around 10pm if I haven't interacted with any non-family member.  Clerks at convenience stores do not count but I would be interested in hearing their opinion about contractors on the Death star

There have been some adjustments I've had to make since leaving Intel.  Here are just some of them...

• No free coffee and food is less accessible - The coffee wasn't a big deal since I have a Keurig but I needed to wait TWO WHOLE MINUTES for the Keurig to heat up the water after I turned it on.  I suppose I can set the Keurig to turn on automatically before I wake up so I blame myself for that.  However, the biggest adjustment is the lack of lunch options.  The Intel cafeteria had a wide assortment of salad fixings, a grill, Mexican food, stir-fry and pizza if nothing else seemed appealing.  They also had Indian food but I'm not into spicy, even if it's "not spicy" (see footnote 1).  My in-house lunch selection has been limited to what's in the fridge which is usually lunch meat and smattering of previous night's leftovers.  If I wanted something else or even a donut, I'll have to get into a car a drive.  *sigh*.  Time to stock up food in the fridge.  I think the variety of food in my cube was larger than what we have at home.
• Need to start using the Gregorian calendar system -  People outside Intel don't use workweeks.  For example, we are in the process of buying a new car.  A dealer told us that he could order one and it would be available in two weeks.  I said that we would be out of town until ww30.1.  He looked at me quizzically until I had to convert it to July 18.  I will have to dust off my memory banks about which month hath 30 days. (footnote 2)
• People information - Since the Intel email and contact information was removed from smartphone, I lost phone numbers and contact information of those I worked with.  So if you text me, don't get offended if I ask "Who are you?"  Also it's awkward when I meet people that I have met before.  If I forget somebody's name at Intel I would quickly glance at their badge.  This isn't available when I meet people now.  I have make to small talk until I have gleaned enough information to remind me who they are.  Luckily I don't have to do that at home.  I make all the family members wear name tags.
• Time Perspective - Not having to go back to work, be it after a weekend or after an eight week sabbatical, is the biggest adjustment for me.  There was always a time-pressure to get things done before I went back to work.  Sunday afternoons would be stressful when I realized there were things that I still wanted to do but there was the pending onus of having to go back to work on Monday.  When my wife also had a Monday-Friday job, I noticed there were a lot of spousal arguments on Sunday afternoons.  The issue that we argued about wasn't large but were subconsciously exacerbated because both of us had to go back to work the next day.  Same with sabbaticals - even though it's eight weeks long, there's still a realization that "my time" was limited.  The pressure to get 'my things' done increased as the end of my sabbatical and I have to head back to work..   Now with no pending return-to-work date, I don't have the pressure of a limited amount of time to accomplish what I want and have the luxury of doing something else without feeling it's taking away from 'my time' (e.g. spending a whole day working on the car where working on cars is not something I enjoy).    However, I need to balance enjoying the freedom from the pressure of getting things done right away with making sure I do what I want to do before my 'retirement' ends.  (I still haven't resumed GoT, only seen the first few minutes of TWD, and haven't started Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm yet).  Stay tuned on this front.

I will be on 'vacation' vacation (i.e. out of town) the next two weeks so I doubt I would blog about it since it's more like a regular vacation that non-retired people take. I doubt people are interested in seeing pictures of my feet in front of a body of water or scenery that they can easily find on Google.  I'll post something on my blog sometime after ww30  mid-July.

Footnote 1 -  I don't eat spicy hot foods and when I went on a business trip to Bangalore, India I found out that what they called "non-spicy" is still quite spicy to me.  I wound up asking for 'negative' spicy food.  To make a semiconductor analogy, their spicythreshold is higher than mine.   I have a lower trip point as to what is spicy.
Footnote 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_days_hath_September or the 'knuckle method'  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Ma0D-fN38

Day 1 - First day of semi-retirement

 A good friend kept suggesting that I would be good at blogging.  I am creative and at times even funny.  However I didn't feel I had enough going on in my life even to tweet anything interesting let alone blog.  My daily routine would be get up, eat breakfast, go to work and come home and hang out with the fam.  Even stuff at work was already being covered by Scott Adams' Dilbert comic strips.  So I was left with nothing.  Until today.

Today would have marked the start of my 29th year at Intel Corporation. To put it in perspective, I started working the year that California last voted for a Republican presidential candidate and the Internet's first website would not be up for another two more years.  A couple of months ago Intel announced it wanted to reduce headcount and offered me an enhanced retirement package which I took and as a result am currently unemployed and typing this in my bathrobe. [TODO - remove last part]

Being that Intel has been my only job since leaving college, I figured that blogging about post-Intel life might be interesting to me and others who may be following my path shortly.  I can provide them what to expect in their post-Intel life "You have to pay for your own coffee." "You'll need to get a non-Intel email address" and "That yellow thing in the sky?  It's called the sun.  Don't stare at it".  It can also be used by psychologists to see my progression into madness.  

My therapist advised me that I need to maintain a routine to avoid falling into a depression.  I think it's analogous to people being freed from prison after being incarcerated for a long time and having trouble adjusting to life "outside" (reference: Shawshank Redemption).  This makes sense since I have spent over half of my life working at Intel.  Instead of 'yard time' as part of my regimented schedule, I had project meetings and 1:1s with my team.   

Having Intel in my blood, I decided to do some goal setting to keep some routine in my life.

Long term goals (6 months and beyond)

• Decompress - after all I earned it!
• Stay sane/undepressed
• Stay solvent financially (the package I received from should last me a year so I'm not worried about that yet) 
• Figure out what I want to do in my life 
• Get caught up with Game of Thrones

Short-term goals 

• Set weekly goals aligned with long-term goals.
• Blog
• Know what day of the week it is
• Shower
• Change clothes
• Eat three meals
• Interact with a non-family member to maintain connections with the outside world.

So let's see where this journey takes me.  Also please forgive me with the format of the blog.  I'm still getting use to this whole blogging thing.

[TODO - Insert inspirational 'starting on a journey' quote]
[TODO - Insert 'Concerning Hobbits' music from Fellowship of the Ring]